Martian moon Phobos could be life clue

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., June 29 (UPI) -- Evidence of life on Mars could come not from a mission to the Red Planet but from one sent to the martian moon Phobos, U.S. researchers said.

"A sample from the moon Phobos, which is much easier to reach than the Red Planet itself, would almost surely contain martian material blasted off [Mars] from large asteroid impacts," Purdue University Professor Jay Melosh said.

"If life on Mars exists or existed within the last 10 million years, a mission to Phobos could yield our first evidence of life beyond Earth," he said in a university release Friday.

Activity lead Bobak Ferdowsi, who cuts his hair differently for each mission, works inside the Spaceflight Operations Facility for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California on August 5, 2012. The Curiosity robot is equipped with a nuclear-powered lab capable of vaporizing rocks and ingesting soil, measuring habitability, and potentially paving the way for human exploration, and was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. UPI/Brian van der Brug/pool

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